Mitch Arvidson

While not technically an occupational license, the certification of police officers is required in most states. The International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training defines certification as “the process by which law enforcement officers are licensed in their respective jurisdictions, establishing the satisfaction of selection, training and continuing performance standards.”

In most states, police officer standards and training (POST) commissions establish these standards and carry out certification. They also are responsible for decertification.

Nearly all U.S. states, including all 11 in the Midwest, have existing statutory authority to certify or decertify, according to Roger Goldman, a law professor at Saint Louis University and leading researcher on this issue. (The states without such authority are California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.)

When a county in Indiana Rep. Randy Frye's district proposed a tax increase to build a new jail in order to relieve overcrowding, his constituents balked. After noticing their opposition to the tax increase, he wanted to get to the root of the issue....

Screening mammograms are used to check for breast cancer in women who have not yet shown any signs or symptoms of the disease. Diagnostic mammograms, on the other hand, are used when additional images are needed after the screening mammogram discovers possible indicators of breast cancer.

These indicators include lumps and dense breast tissue; the latter is an important indicator because women with extremely dense breasts are four to six times more likely to develop cancer than women with fatty breasts, according to Densebreast-info, Inc., an online educational resource. Additionally, it is often hard to detect cancer via routine screening mammograms in higher-density breasts, thus necessitating further tests.

Beyond more in-depth X-ray diagnostic mammograms, other detection tests include ultrasounds (sonograms) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs). Since 2010, under the Affordable Care Act, insurance providers must cover screening mammograms once a year for women ages 40 to 74 with average risk for breast cancer, and once every two years for all other women. However, insurance providers are not required to cover diagnostic tests under federal law.

A new working group in Iowa will look for ways to reduce recidivism among former offenders and eliminate racial bias from the state’s criminal justice system.

Gov. Kim Reynolds asked the group, chaired by Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg — a former state public defender — to deliver recommendations by December, to inform several proposals she will submit to legislators when they reconvene in January.

The racial disparity in Iowa’s criminal justice system is indicated by Bureau of Justice Statistics and census data from 2017 — black Iowans are incarcerated at a rate 9.5 times higher than white Iowans, which is tied with Nebraska for the second highest rate in the Midwest. Both states trail Wisconsin (11.7), and are just ahead of Minnesota (9.2) and Illinois (8.2).